The smallest sports utility in the BMW family is certainly all grown up. The front-drive three-cylinder is surprisingly fighting fit.

Price: $77,800 as tested

Powertrain and economy: 1.5-litre turbo-petrol triple, 103kW/220Nm, seven-speed dual-clutch automatic, FWD, combined economy 7.2 L/100km, CO2 165g/km.

Vital statistics: 4500mm long, 1845mm wide, 1642mm high, 2692mm wheelbase, luggage capacity 514 litres, 245/45 R 19 alloy wheels.

Safety: 5 stars 

We like: Lively engine, smooth dynamics, roomy interior, good tech.

 We don't like:  Strange phone holder, somewhat colour-sensitive shape (go bold; that blue looks ace).

MODERN engines are now built in such a way that they can be driven the car normally and without limitations from the first minute.

Bedding in? Pah! That’s your grand-dad talking. Even the most mundane powerplants are of quality and tolerance levels beyond the best efforts of craftsmen of old, with metallurgy they could not imagine. Supercar or shopping cart, makes not a jot of difference. They’re so much better. So goes the theory. Then there’s this car.

Press cars likely stand second only to rentals and racers when it comes to likelihood of being ragged with no sense of mercy. I’ve no doubt the indenture period for this X1, the sDrive18i, saw it meted little mercy. Munich makes sporty cars. Let it be so.

I hate the idea of abuse, but in this instance if it occurred, it did no harm. At the start of this test, comment from a colleague who drove this car some months previous, when it had barely any kilometres on the clock, came to mind.

He’d advised not to expect too much from the 1.2-litre turbo-petrol. ‘Lacking fizz’ was his assessment. When my turn came? You would likely still want to pick your traffic light Grand Prix opponent carefully, but let’s just say I couldn’t understand why he imagined it wasn’t without pluck. By the time I had it, this thing was feeling very frisky and, I’d say, perfectly seasoned.

Well, why not? Small capacity three-cylinder petrol are a special breed, in my view. I’ve never meet one that didn’t deliver an effervescence that belied its capacity. This one is worthy of BMW’s badge pedigree, even though in that respect the Munich brand’s premium position has one unfortunate outcome, in that the same money asked for this sDrive18i would also all but pay for a Toyota Yaris GR, whose tri-pot is the best I’ve experienced. Period.

In respect to that, comparison doesn’t stick. The BMW and Toyota units are very different horses, for very different courses. The GR is for full-out performance driving. The X1 is not without pluck, but it is also designed to conform to the overall ethos of the car, which asks for it the be the yardstick by which all other premium compact SUVs are to be measured.  

So, yes, the breadth of talent aims in a substantially different direction. If your pockets are more likely lined with silver than lint, the X1 is your kind of car. Still, while the spec sheet says 115kW and 230Nm, in respect to responsiveness and overall energy level, you’d think it had a bit more still.

BMW NZ obviously thinks this tri-cylinder is the best fossil fuelled powerplant for the target market here. Overseas this entry to the badge experience can deliver with a fair swag of choice, everything else in four-cylinder but also including diesel. Yet here the plan for 2023 at least is to issue just two kinds of X1. The car here and, soon, an iX1 edition that is fully electric.

‘X’ in BMW-speak is codex for sports utility and crossover, but when you see a ‘s’ before the word’ drive’ in the naming convention then that’s clear signal to it being the kind of mud-slugger than likes to keep its feet clean; that’s the letter that explains this to be the front-drive car. You’ll need to consider this only if you regularly drive on slippery surfaces such as grass or muddy tracks. Otherwise the reassurance of four-wheel-drive won’t be missed. Like all other BMWs here, it’s an automatic, running a seven-speed.

You don’t expect the smallest sports utility BMW offers to be big car, but is certainly more substantial than the teensiest Beamers used to be.

That’s in part because of the whole SUV thing, all of Munich’s offers in that category seem to have upsized. Anyone offering thought that this car is as sizeable as they remember the first-generation X3 being is hitting the nail dead-on. They’re dead-ringers in all crucial dimension. What adds even more of a funny twist to this is that the X1 is on the same platform as the bigger Minis. In fact, the drivetrain has served in some of those.

You’d not know this from the look. The X1 shapes up as being fully true to Munich styling convention. The bodywork might be a little more conventional in shape, but it has a large kidney grille and all the other usual frontal signatures of a large lower intake and flanking corner intakes.  

It does share quite a lot with the 2 Series Active Tourer MPV, both on the outside – as an example, the headlights have the same narrow design – and also within, where there’s commonality with a curved, two-screen infotainment display across the driver's side of the car and the floating centre console that houses the toggle-style drive selector.  

The exterior design is typical modern BMW. With all the usual touches. The X1 being designed to be aerodynamic is why it has shutters that open and close depending on the airflow needs of the engine and fins at the back to tidy up the air spilling from the car's rear end. I’m guessing that’s also why it has flush door handles, which add a nice modern element but you do have to take care they don’t snap back on your fingertips.

The cabin is very good. Roomy, comfortable – BMW does great seats – and logical. The materials aren’t crazily affluent, but the general fit and finish is superb.

The curved display and tiny gear selector are very modern yet easily accepted. The redesigned steering wheel is easy to operate, too. There’s weirdness in the form of an upright wireless phone charger. It has a little arm to hold your phone in situ. That seems a bit of a strange fix to an issue that wouldn’t arise if the charging mat was a bit deeper. As is, if you put your phone in place without using the arm it’ll fall out come the first corner.

 There’s naturally always some resistance to screens and, true, when you go into the sub-menus, there are a lot of icons to fathom. Also, this system has some reactivity to voice or gesture control, but it’s not mandatory. 

Overall, the new operating system isn’t that bad, the screens are colourful and high-resolution and pretty much everything is a big improvement over the old iDrive rotary.

Yes, there’s heavy reliance on touch, to point BMW has done away with climate control buttons. That’s not always a good thing (ask any Volkswagen owner) but in this instance the presentation is coherent and quick-witted enough to be tolerable. What helps is that the basic temperature up/down controls always remain accessible.

The digital instrument cluster directly ahead of the driver is clear, really easy to read and can also be configured easily to a style that suits the driver. 

As much as an X1 is likely quite nice straight out of the box, as standard kit also includes adaptive headlights, an electric boot, active cruise control, and parking assistant with a 360-degree camera. Yet it’s not the one BMW wants you to have: The options menus will, you’ll be told, make for a better experience.

Being from the initial shipment, the test car ran a $7900 Launch Package which certainly looked like a good deal. It included – take a deep breath - metallic paint, an alarm plus driving assistant professional, which added steering and lane control assistant, automatic speed limit assist, approach control (which involves active cruise control with stop and go function) up to 210kmh, lane keeping assistant with active side collision protection, front/rear crossing traffic warning, emergency stop assistant, a panorama sunroof, a Harmon/Kardon sound system, sliding rear seats, electric adjust for the front seats and sun protection glazing. If you’re wondering … yes, a lot of the above is included as standard on some less premium cars, but that’s just life at this end of the spectrum.

The launch provision was a limited-time offer, beyond which buyers could achieve an innovation pack, with some of the above, for $5500 and an M Sport Package, for $2500, which delivers firmer suspension, 18-inch M Sport alloy wheels and M interior treatments. I wouldn’t go there because it’s not that kind of BMW. X1s in my view are more family-ish than low-flying funsters. 

Functionality-wise, it works okay. The back seats offer good space for adults, let alone children, and the boot is decently shaped and sized. Basically it seems as big as what you get in the larger X3, so will happily swallow a lot.

The platform’s ‘UKL2’ designation is a big giveaway to it being an underpinning  shared with the Mini Countryman (which in petrol form is made in Austria but, in impending electric, is out of Germany) and Clubman (UK for now, Germany soon).

Some of the Minis are a bit bang-crash, not least anything with the ‘John Cooper’ treatment, and that makes them a bit of hard work. The X1, on the other hand, seems to have been given a slightly more compliant suspension tune; it’s not by any means sloppy but also has enough elasticity to eradicate the choppiness that blights the Brits over coarse chip. It sits nearly in corners, too, and the steering is nicely direct. All in all, it’s a nice driver, with body control and damping that’s well resolved at most speeds, but unremarkable in aptitude. It gets the job done.

Being told it’s quite a sensible and grown-up kind of car might seem a bit of a disappointment given how willing the engine is; not just in pull but also zippy soundtrack. On that note, while gearchanges on the eight-speed automatic gearbox are nice and slick, it does seem to hang on to ratios for a little longer than is absolutely necessary in Sport mode.

 This X1 is really just holding the fort until the electric model establishes. Once that happens, the petrol will likely slip back quietly. Both types have plenty of opposition and some of that is quite good. I’d certainly be thinking about cross-shopping this car against the Volvo XC40, for starters.